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Show 632 MR. w. T. B L A N F O R D O N T H E FAUNA OF TIBET. [June 20, pian and Malay regions with India and Lemuria into one great region; and I still hold that the hills of Southern India with the Malabar coast and Southern Ceylon form a province of the Malay re<rion, whilst the greater portion of the Indian peninsula is African in&its affinities *. This subject, however, is too large for discussion in the present note, the principal object of which is to point out a correction which is, I think, of some importance, with regard to the fauna of Tibet. This is, by v. Pelzeln, included in the Malay region : he comprises the typical Tibetan genera such as Panthalops and Poephagus in his list of Malay forms ; and on the map accompanying the paper on the Malay mammal-fauna the Kuenluen range is shown as the northern limit of the region. The fauna of the Tibetan plateau has, in reality, no Malay affinities ; but the cause of the misunderstanding is simple. The two naturalists to whose writings one naturally turns for information about Tibetan animals, are M r . Hodgson and Pere David; and both are eminently misleading, since both collected simultaneously specimens from two faunas which have in fact scarcely a generic type in common- the Himalayan, which is quite correctly classed by v. Pelzeln as a subdivision of the Malay region, and the Tibetan, which is part of Blyth's Mongolian province belonging to the Boreal or Palaearctic region. The former possessess a very rich fauna with numerous peculiar types; the latter is poor in species, though individuals are locally numerous. It is consequently not surprising that the few members of the Tibetan fauna which show peculiarity should be ignored amongst the vast bulk of Himalayan genera, and that Tibet should be assigned to the Malay region. On the southern slopes of the Himalayas tbere is everywhere, until it has been cleared, luxuriant forest up to at least 12,000 feet above the sea, inhabited by a fauna which extends without any great change of generic forms, throughout the Malay peninsula and into the hill-tracts of some at least of the Malay islands f. Immediately J north of the main Himalayan range, a cold, barren, and desert region of mountains and plateaux extends, swept by winds from which all moisture has been drained by the high mountain-chains on all sides. To this tract not one of the forest-haunting inhabitants of the Himalayas ever penetrates, although many of them extend far into the mountains along the damp and richly wooded valleys of rivers. The fauna of these Tibetan plateaux is essentially Boreal, Alpine and even Arctic types prevailing, the country having in many parts a climate scarcely equalled elsewhere for intensity of cold out of the Arctic regions. This high barren tableland extends from Afghanistan to Yunan; it comprises the drainage-areas of the Upper Indus and the Sanpii, and is bounded on the north in its western portion by the Kuenluen range; but it is less defined and its boundaries less accurately known to the eastward, * J. A. S. B. 1870, vol. xxxix. pt. 2. p. 336. t Elwes, P. Z. S. 1873, p. 615. \ How sudden the change is, in places, is admirably described in Hooker's ' Himalayan Journals,' vol. ii. p. 158. |
